Bottom line: China used its traditional silent treatment
approach to kill Qualcomm's bid to buy NXP, quite possibly to show
its displeasure with recent US trade tensions, but resulting global
pressure could forced it to be more transparent in the future.

We'll close out the week with my own quick-and-dirty post mortem
of the collapsed deal that would have seen telecoms chip maker
Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) purchase Dutch rival NXP (Nasdaq: NXPI) for
$44 billion. Put simply, this deal appears to have been killed by
China's classic approach of "kill them with silenc......

Bottom line: Facebook and Google's latest micro-moves into China
reflect their longer term efforts to get permission to launch major
services in the market, though it's unclear if they will get such a
green-light anytime soon.

You have to give China-challenged Internet giants Facebook
(Nasdaq: FB) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) an "e" for effort. Both
companies have popped into the China headlines over the last two
weeks for micro-moves into the world's largest Internet market,
including the latest news that Facebook plans to set up a company
in Hangzhou that will b......

Bottom line: Baidu's withdrawal from Brazil reflects a broader
inability of Chinese companies to succeed overseas due to their
different practices and local wariness about their ability to
protect user privacy.

In what is probably coming as a surprise to no one, media
reports are saying that search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is
pulling out of Brazil. This would represent the company's latest
failure abroad, and is really part of a broader string of failures
not only for the company but China's internet sector in general.
This particular group is quite good at milking th......

Bottom line: Xiaomi appears to be gaining confidence of
investors through moves like its entry into South Korea, but it
will take at least another year to prove it really has the savvy to
thrive over the longer term.

Newly listed smartphone maker Xiaomi (HKEx: 1810) has kept the
world guessing these past two weeks with its on-again-off-again
performance both on the Hong Kong stock exchange and now in the
real world. The former is a reference to its stock, which did quite
poorly in the run-up to its trading debut last Monday but has done
a U-turn since then and posted some impr......

Bottom line: Live broadcasting specialists Inke and Huya should
do well over the next year but could face difficulty after that as
popularity of such services fades, while Xiaomi's stock gains over
the last two days look like a dead-cat bounce.

Following the unimpressive debut of smartphone maker Xiaomi
(HKEx: 1810) earlier this week, live streaming site Inke (HKEx:
3700) is the latest high-tech listing in the headlines with a more
impressive debut in Hong Kong. This latest deal follows the US
listing for Huya (NYSE: HUYA), China's first live streaming site to
make an IPO, w......

Bottom line: Xiaomi's stock is likely to be volatile over the
next year and could move broadly downward as investors wait to see
if the company's comeback has legs and it can move into higher-end
products.

Smartphone maker Xiaomi (HKEx: 1810) seems to have become the
proverbial lead zepplyn sinking further and further into the mire
as it finally made its trading debut in Hong Kong. The company has
been dogged by skepticism almost since the get-go of its
blockbuster IPO, which ended this morning here in Asia with the
stock's official trading debut. The question from here ......

Bottom line: A court order barring Micron Technology from China
and Donald Trump's attempts to keep China Mobile out of the US
reflect blurring lines between business and politics in heightening
US-China trade tensions.

Two new headlines are showing how trade tensions between the US
and China are spilling over into the high-tech realm, while also
reflecting a certain amount of confusion and twisting of the facts.
Leading the somewhat misleading headlines is an item that has U.S.
memory chip giant Micron (Nasdaq: MU) suddenly being shut out of
China for a number of its products d......

Bottom line: A new IPO by e-commerce company Pingduoduo could do
reasonably well due to its rapid growth and unusual business model,
but could suffer from a "flavor of the day" element over the longer
term.

After years of basically having just two choices to invest in
China's e-commerce market, investors will soon have another new and
interesting option with the upcoming listing of a company called
Pinduoduo. I'll admit that I was unfamiliar with Pinduoduo before
reading about this upcoming listing. But that said, the numbers do
point to a potential high-flyer in t......